WMU

WMUK's news department has been recognized by Public Radio News Director's Inc. At PRNDI's annual meeting in Philadelphia on June 22-23, 2018, WMUK received four national awards in Division B for stations with four-to-seven full-time news personnel for programs produced in 2017.

SPLICE - Summer institute for Performance, Listening, Interpretation, and Creation of Electroacoustic music - is a weeklong, intensive program for performers and composers who work with instruments and electronics. Held at Western Michigan University's School of Music, over 60 musicians and composers from across the US will participate in workshops, masterclasses, private lessons, and public performances of new works. The public is invited to free concerts each weeknight at 7:30 pm in the Dalton Center Recital Hall, and a full day of performances from 10:30 am - 8:00 pm, on Saturday, June 30.

Co-founders Christopher Biggs and Keith Kirchoff, performer/composer Sam Wells, and composer/participant Carolyn Borcherding joined Cara Lieurance to talk about the variety of public concerts offered during SPLICE week, and how electroacoustic music festivals and workshops foster community and growth within the new music world.

In two sessions, at 6 and 8 pm on Friday, jazz pianist Matthew Fries and bassist Phil Palombi will record a concert in an intimate live setting in front of an audience at Overneath studios in downtown Kalamazoo. It's part of a series hosted by Overneath called the KBR Sessions.

Fries is the newest member of Western Michigan University’s jazz faculty, having joined the WMU School of Music last September. In an interview with Cara Lieurance, he discusses his decision to leave New York City after 23 years, his influential teacher, Donald Brown, and his recent project with his sister, artist Loryn Spangler-Jones.

On Friday, the Kalamazoo Bach Festival will close its festival with a concert by the Merling Trio, the esteemed ensemble-in-residence at Western Michigan University. With the addition of bassist Tom Knific, the group will premiere three new works, by Adam Schumaker, Gene Knific, and Tom Knific, as part of an extended arrangement of J.S. Bach's Italian Concerto, BWV 971. The three composers each took one movement of the concerto, and created a jazz-inspired companion movement to go with it.

To close the concert, long time friend and former student of Renata Artman Knific, Mialtin Zhezha, will join the Merling Trio and bassist Tom Knific to perform Schubert's Quintet in A, D. 667, "The Trout."